Think Twice Before Sorting

Recently I started listening to “Algorithms to Live By” by Brian Christian and Tom Griffiths. It is a lovely way of approaching human behaviour through the eyes of computer scientists. It breaks down common misconceptions about optimal stopping, exploring vs exploiting, sorting and many more.

The one chapter that caught my ear was about sorting. Just as context, I love sorting. It’s such a straightforward task, you have something messy and with a certain amount of time, you can make it logically ordered. So satisfying.

In the chapter, are explored different types of sorting that consume more or less time. The plot twist for me was at the end of the chapter – the first question that a computer scientist should ask is “Does it even need to be sorted?”

I had never really questioned the sorting itself. It had always seemed that sorted stuff is better than not sorted stuff. It is why my desktop is neatly organised, why I arrange my course material into folders methodically and why I have made a very complete Notion setup. It seemed like the most logical way to go about it.

The point of sorting is described in “Algorithms to Live By” as a way to access information faster thanks to a structured way of arranging it. However, sorting is necessary only when we go to retrieve said information frequently. Otherwise, the amount of time spent looking for the information in the moment will be inferior to the amount of time that it would have taken to organise everything around it.

In conclusion, being organised is good, but it is a waste of time to organise everything in life. I will try to embrace organised chaos in certain aspects of life. Furthermore, I will walk away with the idea of being more conscious about how I act. Being able to question your routines in order to improve them is the holy grail.

This Week's Suggestions:

🎶 "Miracle" by Calvin Harris and Ellie Goulding:

Throughout my youth, I have enjoyed a lot of Calvin Harris and Ellie Goulding songs. This song was something completely fresh for me. The style is very different from Calvin Harris' usual sound design. I saw that it has been described as 90's trance which is a good way of putting it. Check it out!

Till next week!